Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I emailed Richard Stallman at the encouragement of a couple of friends here in order to get my concerns in front of him, and hopefully, to get a response. The entire exchange pretty much speaks for itself, I'd say, so I'll simply reproduce it in full here.

My initial email:

Dear Dr. Stallman:

I was in the audience during your keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, and I was perplexed and distressed by a few things.

The lesser of these was your tendency to shout over questioners while they were in mid-question, and to dismiss their questions as “silly”. However, this is not what I’m mainly concerned about.

The more significant problem was your comments regarding “EMAC virgins”, which you defined as being specifically “_women_ who had never used EMACS”, and for whom being “relieved” of this “virginity” was a “holy duty”. My reaction, and the reaction of a large number of members of the audience with whom I’ve spoken was one of great dismay.

Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you view women as being in particular need of technical assistance (presumably by men, since there's apparently no such thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin"); additionally, women are quite capable of making their own decisions about who might relieve them of whatever sort of “virginity”. I (and many others) viewed these remarks as denigrating and demeaning to women, as well as completely out of place at what is, in essence, a technical conference.

As a member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board, I engage in regular discussions about the relatively small number of women involved in open source. I feel that it is thoughtless comments like your remarks on “EMACS virgins” which contribute, quite heavily, to this situation. Given your position with respect to the free software community, I feel you did your audience a great disservice. If those remarks were intended as a joke, the joke was, frankly, not at all a funny one. I’d strongly encourage you to refrain from such comments in the future.

I also think you may find it worth considering that there are active and important members of the free software community who consider themselves Christians—I’d cite Michael Meeks as just one example. While no one insists that you agree with or subscribe to a particular religion, people are every bit as entitled to their own beliefs as you are to your lack of them, and I thought it likewise inappropriate to take keynote time to create a situation in which you marginalize members of the community by mocking Christianity. Again, this is a technical conference.

I personally feel as though you owe your audience, and in particular the women attending the conference, an apology. The remarks came across as thoughtless, inconsiderate and sexist--again, this is not simply my own opinion, but one which I’ve heard echoed, over and over, in my discussions with others who were present at the time. I would imagine that this was not your intention, but it was indeed the reaction of many members of the audience.

I hope you will take this letter in the spirit in which it’s intended. I’ll look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

David “Lefty” Schlesinger

Dr. Stallman's reply:

The Cult of the Virgin of Emacs, like the rest of the Church of Emacs, is meant to poke fun at religion and at myself. I think that you and some others have misunderstood it.

>While no one insists that you agree with or subscribe to> a particular religion, people are every bit as entitled to> their own beliefs as you are to your lack of them,

Yes, they are. Are you accusing me of wishing to deny them these rights? If so, you do me wrong. I defend religious freedom as strongly as anyone.

However, freedom of religion the freedom to criticize religious views. No human views are off limits to criticism, or joking. People have a right to criticize religion directly, or to ridicule it harshly.

However, St IGNUcius does neither of those; at most it makes gentle fun of religion, tangentially. There is no reason for religious people to take offense at that. I have presented St IGNUcius with Catholic priests in the audience, and it did not offend them.

>I personally feel as though you owe your audience,>and in particular the women attending the conference,>an apology. The remarks came across as thoughtless,>inconsiderate and sexist--again, this is not simply my>own opinion, but one which I've heard echoed, over and>over, in my discussions with others who were present at the time.

I do not believe I owe anyone an apology. I did not insult or attack them, but it is clear some people are attacking me. I think I am being criticized unjustly criticized, and I feel I have been wronged.

I am concerned about this reported hostile reaction. But I am not sure what to make of it, since it goes against nearly all the rest of my experience. I have had very few negative reactions to St IGNUcius in the past; the only one I can remember was from someone who was hostile to begin with. So this seems like an anomalous case. I don't understand why it happened.

You said that you "heard it echoed, over and over", but how many people actually had this reaction? Maybe it was a few people who started a lot of conversations.

My second email:

Dear Dr. Stallman:

I'm honestly a little surprised--amazed, really--that you managed to completely ignore the three central paragraphs which I identified as being the core of my concerns, choosing instead to focus on the side issue of the anti-religious bent of your "St. IGNUcius" routine.

Let me reiterate, without the distractions:

> The more significant problem was your comments> regarding “EMAC virgins”, which you defined as being> specifically “_women_ who had never used EMACS”,> and for whom being “relieved” of this “virginity” was a “holy> duty”. My reaction, and the reaction of a large number of> members of the audience with whom I’ve spoken was> one of great dismay.>> Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you view> women as being in particular need of technical assistance> (presumably by men, since there's apparently no such> thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin"); additionally, women> are quite capable of making their own decisions about> who might relieve them of whatever sort of “virginity”. I> (and many others) viewed these remarks as denigrating> and demeaning to women, as well as completely out> of place at what is, in essence, a technical conference.>> As a member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory> Board, I engage in regular discussions about the relatively> small number of women involved in open source. I feel> that it is thoughtless comments like your remarks on> “EMACS virgins” which contribute, quite heavily, to this> situation. Given your position with respect to the free> software community, I feel you did your audience a great> disservice. If those remarks were intended as a joke, the> joke was, frankly, not at all a funny one. I’d strongly> encourage you to refrain from such comments in the future.

Perhaps you can respond to _these_ concerns rather than the more tangential ones.

> I am concerned about this reported hostile reaction.

I would hope so.

> But I am not sure what to make of it, since it goes> against nearly all the rest of my experience. I have> had very few negative reactions to St IGNUcius> in the past; the only one I can remember was from> someone who was hostile to begin with. So this seems> like an anomalous case. I don't understand why it> happened.

I understand exactly why it "happened": as I said, your remarks were sexist, thoughtless, dismissive and denigrating.

> You said that you "heard it echoed, over and over",> but how many people actually had this reaction?> Maybe it was a few people who started a lot of> conversations.

I would estimate that I've spoken to well in excess of a hundred people at the conference about this; most of them initiated the conversation with me, rather than the other way around. The virtually universal reaction has been exactly what I described to you: dismay, unhappiness and concern over the view of women which your idea of "gentle fun" implied.

Again, you did your audience a serious disservice with these remarks. I stand by my statement that you owe all of us an apology.

Sincerely,

David "Lefty" Schlesinger

Dr. Stallman's reply:

> I'm honestly a little surprised--amazed, really--that> you managed to completely ignore the three central> paragraphs which I identified as being the core of my> concerns, choosing instead to focus on the side issue of> the anti-religious bent of your "St. IGNUcius" routine.

I did respond to the other points, just more briefly.

>> The remarks came across as thoughtless, inconsiderate>> and sexist--again, this is not simply my own opinion, but>> one which I've heard echoed...>> I do not believe I owe anyone an apology. I did not insult or> attack them, but it is clear some people are attacking me....

> Your remarks gave the distinct impression that you> view women as being in particular need of technical> assistance (presumably by men, since there's > apparently no such thing as a _male_ "EMACS virgin");> additionally, women are quite capable of making their> own decisions about who might relieve them of whatever> sort of "virginity". I (and many others) viewed these > remarks as denigrating and demeaning to women,

The cult of the Virgin of Emacs is simply intended as a joke about the cult of the Virgin Mary. I assure anyone who perceived derogatory meanings in it that I did not intend them.

Wow. Just wow. In anyone can find the point in his first message where he responded, "albeit more briefly", to the issue I raised, can you point it out to me? I sure don't see it.

> Does RMS think all source code should be free,> or his private e-mails as well??

Have exactly the same question. Any further discussion of political correctness is pointless before this question is answered, as you cannot seriously request polical correctness without respecting it yourself. Sounds fishy.

Geee, another defender of the female cause. Most of them are grown up and fully able to defend themselves.

+1 on the publishing of private email. I don't think you got permission from RMS, so I suggest you remove his answers and replace them with brief summaries. Him not answering on public mailing lists doesn't give you any right.

Lefty, you have serious issues! Of course email conversation is private by default, unless stated otherwise! It's extremly rude, if not unlawful to mail someone privately and to publish the conversation later without asking the communication partner for agreement!

DUDE! REALLY!

Btw, I am pretty sure you only got positive response regarding your concerns during the converence because of people's politeness: (Uh? What the heck?) "Yes, RMS' talk was strange." (Now let's get on-topic.)

I agree with RMS that the religious concern is completely non-founded and off-topic. I agree with him that we have the liberty to mock religion and that it has a place in a technical conference.

But, regardless of that, the sexism is a lot more disturbing. The fact that he's trying to avoid replying you is a good indicator.

The problem is that RMS is *really* rude. I was shocked the first time I saw him ( http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?97-it-s-a-long-way-to-the-top ). This guy does more harm than good. He's a fanatic and, like every fanatic, he's dangerous and never accept that he can be wrong sometime.

A simple answer like "It was intended to mock virgin mary and I didn't think it would be understood as sexist joke" would have been enough. But no : YOU didn't understood it correctly. He was too subte for you.

Regarding other comments : this discussion should really be on the planet (I hate those planet cleaner that want it whiter than white). I also think there's no arm about publishing those emails. You are discussing a public conference. Hey guys, this is not privacy. Just use common sense instead of being bound to the letter. There's nothing not public in those emails.

Feels like wanting to gather a mob. The virgin thing you addressed in the first email was answered in the last - that it is not about virginity, but the holiness of virgin Mary, and that kind of changes the whole perception now, doesn't it?It might be rough at the edges, but does it really deserves to be put on pgo (4k subscribers just in the google reader).Not even deserves - is it worth it?Do you expect a public apology or public hanging?

Not at all. I believe I've been pretty even-handed about the whole thing, and have attempted to state the facts, without undue embellishment.

I'd be interested in someone explaining to me why it's on the one hand okay to "share" an mp3 of a copyrighted song with one's "neighbors", yet somehow not okay for me to similarly "share" Dr. Stallman's messages with my "neighbors". Dr. Stallman is clearly a public figure, and someone who has some significant influence within the free and open source software community. There's certainly nothing in there which is either of a private or personal nature.

I frankly suspect that the folks complaining about this are doing so out of a sense of outright embarrassment. I further suspect that if I had simply summarized the content of Dr. Stallman's email messages, folks would be jumping up and down, asking how they could know that he actually said such things.

I found this post utterly ridiculous, and the fact that you drag the GNOME advisory board into it even worse. Stallman regulary does the same at most of his talks, it's meant to be good fun and he is completely within his right to do so. Furthermore, I have yet to see a woman offended by it, and I have seen quite a few of them present at his talks.

Just wanted to say that I am glad you brought it up. I was not there, but if anyone got offended (and you claim there were many) then I think it is worth to discuss.

If RMS was any kind of decent person he could at least have apologized. He is well in is right to still believe that he has said nothing wrong. But a "sorry to offend you, that was not how it was meant to be interpreted" would almost instantly have made him look less like an insensitive bastard. At least then it is a question of poor jokes, and not of being sexist.

What I am most shocked about is actually the huge number of RMS "supporters" writing here. The comments displayed here if anything shows that there are sexist tendencies in this community that frankly needs to go away.

You have to be really strong, regardless of gender, to stand up and say "I was actually offended" when a whole bunch of people, who were not targeted by the "joke" in the first place, are telling you to just "take a joke".

I was not at GCDS, nor do I in any way consider myself religious, but having read your posts (and others) regarding Dr. Stallman's talk I have to say I agree with calling him out on his comments. The fact that a number of people clearly *were* offended means that it was offensive in the context that it was delivered. Publishing the emails may be slightly questionable but to my mind it is besides the point.

Dr. Stallman's behaviour confuses me. If he truly wishes to spread the free software message further, perhaps he might consider whether or not the material such as what we are discussing here actually helps in that direction. Personally, even if it was intended to be a joke, I'm not sure that it does.

David, don't let these people get you down. I, for one, am totally with you on this issue. As someone who is technically gay (a complicated issue that can be understood on my blog), I deal with lots of persecution on a daily basis. And while I understand these peoples' arguements about "Hey, let women stick up for themselves!", the fact of the matter is THEY WEREN'T THERE.

Honestly, most of the commentors today are acting like absolute children. They mix their own "Moral Absolutism" (OH MY GODS, HE PUBLISHED AN EMAIL?!) with a philosophy of "Chill the f*ck out".

I'm glad you stood up against something that was clearly out of line. Even if Stallman "didn't mean it that way.", I could sit in front of a tech conference dressed as a black slave and talk about how "the white massa Microsoft" was trying to whip and control the Linux community. It would be tasteless, wrong, and would offend people, regardless of my intended message.

Bottom line: Stallman doesn't just owe YOU an apology, he owes every female member of the world an apology.

As a woman (lightly) involved with open source/free software, I was disturbed by Richard's "joke" a few years ago when I attended one of his talks, where he also specifically referred to EMACS Virgins as being women specifically.

Being one of only a handful of women in an audience at a male-dominated talk amplifies the awkwardness when such sexual jokes are made, especially when you don't know many people there.

I'm not a complainer by nature, so I never bothered to complain about his behavior. I've just made it a point to avoid his talks in the future (which, afaiu, is the exact same talk anyway).

With regards to South Park, that show is a great example of insensitive jokes that are meant to offend. Not everyone is into that kind of comedy, thus making it completely inappropriate at conferences where the speaker does not know the audience well enough to judge their comedic tolerances.

One of the things that defines great speakers is the ability to adjust their talk to fit the audience they are delivering it to.

Richard Stallman clearly did not know his audience well enough to deliver his EMACS Virgins "joke" because clearly many people did not get it and/or were offended.

Being that Richard Stallman is supposed to be a leader of Free Software, it makes it doubly important for him to provide a good example for other speakers to avoid insensitive jokes (or images as with the Ruby conference earlier this year) that may offend portions of their audience.

Thank you, David, for bringing this to the community's attention.

Hopefully this will help make people aware that they need to try and be more empathetic to their audience and tailor their jokes accordingly.

Due to all the negative voices in this I wanted to pipe in and say "Good Job".

I find this parallel to the problems that happened at a recent Ruby conference and find it sad how few people understand the importance of being friendly and open especially one which cause is or is trying to be mainstream. You have people of different backgrounds. Which is more important to communicate effectively the technical ideas or to ostracize and claim its other peoples fault? The purpose of communication is not to just speak but to be understood, so the fault in bad communication lies predominately with the presenter and is the only person you have control over.

This is a public conversation that needs to happen and I think sharing the result of a query is important so we get some clue as to whats going on.

Publishing private emails is a sticky issue.

A person speaking in private might give a different voice than what they speak in public, not because their argument is different but because there are unknowns in how people will take things. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like RMS cares about his tone all that much.

If instead these emails were just summarized, people would complain about whether RMS's opinion was properly conveyed.

>Well, Tom, they were most certainly felt >to be offensive by many, many folks here >at the Desktop Summit.

But that's the fault of Stallman if these people don't understant irony. They are the ones to blame for lacking such a basic sense of humor.

Stallman may be a bit rude, but I don't think he is sexist. He is even propably an advocate of female cause, given the number of subjects on which he is more or less engaged (just look at his personnal webpage : from ecology to freedom of speech and other things, this guy is progressist on nearly all political issues - which is great -, so don't bother him because you fail to understand what he said).

Well, I generally dislike RMS 'cause he tends to come across as a pompous asshole, which he probably is. I generally don't reply to silly blog posts by random open source guys so this is fairly new to me.

But! everything about this whole thing being blown out of proportion just goes to show what is wrong with the world today. We're turning into a bunch of can't-fend-for-ourselves can't-stand-other-peoples'-believes not-in-my-backyard bunch of whiners.

It's besides the question whether or not you found his jokes or remarks out of line. Good for you if you think they were, don't go to his next speech. If it's indeed true that a shitload of people actually agreed with you and they draw the same conclusion and stop going to see him speech as well, he'll stop acting like that soon enough. However, since he's been at it for quite some time, I think he has an audience that appreciates it. Sucks for you if you don't agree, but doesn't mean he owes you, or anyone an apology.

As a GNOME Advisory Board member, you are in the position to advise GNOME and the conference organizers to not invite him back until he learns to communicate better with his audience and not be offensive. This would be a basic requirement for a non-celebrity presenter.

I think it's great to increase awareness of this side of RMS. I was at his talk at the Summit, and I was not happy with most aspects of it. This was the first time I had ever seen RMS speak, and I have to say that if nothing else it's quite disappointing (if not outright disturbing) to see him being paid to go around and act like this.

Fanboys defend him all you like, but I think it's great that Lefty is getting this out there. I'd like this to be the last time RMS is invited to speak at a Desktop Summit. If he's going to sit around and talk about relieving women of their "emacs virginity" and talking about why we shouldn't use certain technologies after he has just admitted that he knows nothing about them.. he's just not doing anything for us. Why is he being paid to stand up there and act like a jackass?

I think we've all just out-grown RMS, as people and as a community. He did good stuff for us back in the day, but we've got new and more effective leaders now.

That's absurd, zanko. This is a conference, not a comedy club, and the folks who sponsor it aren't paying to have someone come in to be offensive and off-topic.

"Saint IGNUcious", and Stallman's "sense of humor" (soi disant), have nothing to do with free software. He should pay his own way to a bar with an open mike if he's dying to be the next George Carlin (although he'll definitely need much better material).

As a GNOME Advisory Board member, you are in the position to advise GNOME and the conference organizers to not invite him back until he learns to communicate better with his audience and not be offensive. This would be a basic requirement for a non-celebrity presenter.

I've done exactly that, David. It seems fairly certain that he won't be invited to participate again in the future, and that's just fine with me.

We should not discriminate people because of their religion, their sex, their sexual preference, their nationality, their height, whether they have a significant other (or more than one) and a kid (or more than one), the intensity of their dreams (unless free software-related, maybe), and a whole bunch of other traits. We should not do that, and that’s a good thing. I don’t see anybody here (= in these comments) arguing otherwise. No sexist tendencies here, luckily.

Lefty and others would go a big step further: if they would have it their way, joking about stereotypes, particularities of religions, etc. should be banned as well. I am not at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, so I only know about the “incident” from what I read on the planets. But I have seen and heard Richard Stallman saying similar things before. I must confess taking his side in this argument. I get the joke. I get it’s a joke. I get it’s meant as a joke and not meant to offend. I admit: the joke isn’t particularly funny. But if we ban this, we must ban the funny ones as well. And eliminating the humour from life is not a good thing. The political correctness tendency that tries to do so, scares me.

Frankly I find it sexist that you think women are so fragile that you need to filter what they hear in case they are offended.

Adam makes an excellent argument. Claiming that women must be offended by Stallman’s remarks, amounts to proclaiming that women are so fragile that jokes will harm them. This all-women-are-vulnerable-attitude is prejudiced, and definitely more sexist than Stallman’s joke.

What I am most shocked about is actually the huge number of RMS "supporters" writing here. The comments displayed here if anything shows that there are sexist tendencies in this community that frankly needs to go away.

Hannes’ remark freightens me even more. What Hannes is preaching, is not only political correctness, but political meta-correctness. If Hannes has it his way, not only should we not joke and ban joking, but we also should ban defending the very concept of humour!

In Hannes’ view, the fact that the free software community is not unanimously outraged about Stallmans joke is an indication of “sexist tendencies” in the community. By that logic, the fact that the world is not unanimously outraged about South Park, is proof that human society is doomed.

This is a conference, not a comedy club, and the folks who sponsor it aren't paying to have someone come in to be offensive

I find this an interesting point, perhaps the best argument in the whole discussion.

But I remain unconvinced. I even find the logic dangerous. If risqué humour is only acceptable to audiences who have paid (or have at least especially turned up) to hear risqué humour (but not in public), then talking about free software would only be acceptable to audiences who have especially gathered to hear about free software. The talks at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit would still be OK, but all other evangelising would be unacceptable.

By that logic, talking politics would also be only acceptable to audiences interested in politics (thus not in public) and praying would only be permissible in church/temple/mosque (but not in public, or at a free software conference).

"I get the joke. I get it’s a joke. I get it’s meant as a joke and not meant to offend. I admit: the joke isn’t particularly funny."

No, this really misses the point. Intent matters, but so do results.

People were *actually* offended here, whether RMS *intended* it or not. And yet his response shows no concern that he actually offended anyone. Why should he be invited back, given that he's not concerned with offense he caused? That is the issue.

"By that logic, talking politics would also be only acceptable to audiences interested in politics (thus not in public) and praying would only be permissible in church/temple/mosque (but not in public, or at a free software conference)."

But this isn't just some guy in the halls at a software conference talking about politics or something else that's not on the topic of free software. If there's a guy in the hall saying things of very questionable humor that might be offensive, it's annoying but you're much less likely to feel any obligation to sit there and listen to him be a dick than if it's Richard Fucking Stallman standing in front of a large audience doing this. We're talking about a very well-respected guy who was invited, because of his reputation and experiences in creating the free software movement, to come speak at a free software conference. You would expect under those circumstances that he would behave professionally and talk about the subject that is the common interest between him and the audience. And he did--but for less than half the time he was actually standing there.

So don't sit here and tell us that we're trying to oppress someone's free speech because we can't take a joke or something. We and the companies some of us work for (by way of registration fees), the GNOME Foundation, and whatever KDE's equivalent foundation is all -paid- for him to come out and speak, so I think we have a right to complain if we feel that we didn't get our money's worth. He offended people (whether he meant to or not), and he was clearly not very well informed on one of the controversial discussions that actually was related to free software.

I attended that RMS talk, and I was offended by it, and I'm with Lefty here. And I"m a bit bored by people commenting here telling me what to think or not. If I was offended by it I was offended by it. Fullstop.

You would expect (…) that he would behave professionally and talk about the subject that is the common interest between him and the audience. And he did--but for less than half the time he was actually standing there.

Fair enough. I agree completely.

However, the issue Lefty complained about (Stallman telling the joke) is a very different issue than the one you complain about (Stallman not speaking on topic about free software-related stuff during more than half of his invited talk).

Your criticism has to do with the length of the joke; Lefty’s with the content.

Your criticism is actually a very good reason not to invite Stallman again. He didn’t do what he was asked and paid to do.

"Your criticism has to do with the length of the joke; Lefty’s with the content."

Do you suffer from some kind of myopia?

If you invite me to dinner with your parents and I spend part of the evening calling your mother, in well meaning jest, a two bit whore, and then refuse to acknowledge your being offended, you would feel perfectly fair in not inviting me back.

And that's precisely what Lefty's post establishes. He notified RMS that his talk offended many attendees, RMS showed it was no concern of his, and Lefty's recommending RMS not be invited back to speak based on this.

Grow up dude and get a life. Emails whether or not just shows your own immaturity to post. But just shows the type of character you have.

How do we even know you didn't edit his responses with your own? Quit trying to read between the lines and twist his words around to what you want to hear.

People have the right to criticise any religion they choose to. They is there own opinions. If you want to where you can't voice your own opinions. Go live in the middle east. Where you can get killed or imprisoned for saying bad things about religion. Respect people's opinions and their privacy and show your own ignorance by plastering emails.

a. Emails .. my amateur understanding of the Law (in this country) is that any publication (in this case, email) is by default the copyright of the author. Intentional re-production and publication of copyright material is an offense and I understand a mother of 4 just for fined a couple of million $'s for doing just that with 24 music tracks. I suspect RMS wouldn't stoop to engaging lawyers, but if he did my guess is that he'd nail you to the wall.

b. I wasn't there, but I'm assuming that anyone could have stood up and left at any point. People who were REALLY offended would surely have done so .. and I would've thought 100 people doing this would've conveyed the message to RMS. Given this didn't happen (?), either those concerned weren't THAT offended, or had no backbone. Either way, I don't see complaining after the fact is either useful or anything other character assassination. And of course people not leaving conveys the message to him that what he's saying isn't "THAT" offensive.

c. I'm guessing he was invited to speak by someone .. and this "joke" isn't new .. so whoever invited him will have know the content (roughly) prior to inviting him .. I don't see the organizers being mentioned here?

d. Those people who commented they'd heard the joke before .. and still come back to hear him talk again .. even tho' they'd been offended previously .. seriously ?!?!

Our freedom's have been eroded to the point where we don't really have that many left .. and even then we still seem still to have people trying to tell us what it is we can and can't say, or in this case, what RMS can or can't say.

There are natural barriers to people behaving badly, in this case the barriers don't seem to indicate that what was said was THAT offensive. (caveat; I've never heard him talk or even met him..)

However, it is a fact that Women do not (in general) seem to have either much interest in or an aptitude for computing / computer programming, and given women often laugh at my many sterotypical qualities, I'm generally not offended by the concept of a little good-natured payback .. I mean .. it's not like he commented on their driving or anything .. ;-)

Just to re-iterate , whereas the "woman driver" thing is generally "myth", there really aren't many female programmers about, and the ones I've met, by and large, aren't really "into it". (although I'm sure there are some women out there who are, it's a pretty reliable generalization)

It's also a fact that there are people out there (somewhere) who think EMACS is wonderful whereas the majority of us think it's unusable crap .. hence I can see where the joke is coming from.

To be honest, anyone hearing "EMACS" in a "line" should probably assume a joke is coming .. or indeed at the point of hearing "EMACS" that it's come. (look, that's me exercising my right to express an opinion, while I still can)

Anyway, offending people is not good. When offended, it would be right to do something at the time with a view to mitigating the offense suffered and indeed to obtaining an apology if deemed appropriate.

However, to continue to suffer the offense at the time and only later decide to take action .. did you only then discover how offended you were?

One poster here calls you a "prick", I think this is a little harsh and indeed quite offensive .. personally I would have gone with "exhibition of poor judgement".

It does make me wonder now what sort of people sit on the "GNOME Foundation Advisory Board" ... (!)

It IS very rude of you, RMS. Publishing private email without mutual consent could be considered as crime. I really think the one who has issue is you, RMS. It's a joke and people don't take joke seriously. Nevertheless, I find you so offensive with Dr.Stallman, I think you should give an apology to him.

my amateur understanding of the Law (in this country) is that any publication (in this case, email) is by default the copyright of the author....

Yes, your understanding is amateurish at best.

I completely agree that I've violated Stallman's copyright by posting these emails. That's just tough. Write your Congressman, or call the cops if you like. If Stallman wants to send me a proper DCMA "takedown notice", he's quite welcome to.

But since these emails clearly have absolutely no commercial value whatsoever, there's no way that he could collect so much as a counterfeit nickel in damages.

Again, I'm very interested in understanding how it's somehow just fine to take a Metallica album, turn it into MP3s, throw 'em all into BitTorrent and "share them with your neighbor"--a sort of activity which I believe Stallman supports--but it's somehow a serious problem for me to share emails (containing neither private nor personal information) with my neighbor.

You can't have it both ways, sorry. If you think I'm wrong to post emails, then you must also think it's wrong to give away copyrighted music, right...? And unlike these emails, those songs do (arguably, anyway, I'm not much of a Metallica fan) have commercial value.

People get offended at the smallest of things these days. Is RMS really that horrible of a person? He doesn't deal drugs or steal from people or kill anyone...ok maybe he hurts a few feelings.. but still he's a decent human being, give the man a break.

If he has done this act many times, I can see why he wouldn't understand why it would be raising issues this time around. I think this crap should just be removed, and let people get back to flaming about stuff like mono or whatever is next in line, instead of writing a desktop environment that can compete with the big boys.

Hilarious. Political correctness all the way. It's okay to mock church, but it's not okay to make a parody of it if that involves "women". Of course RMS should have said "Virgin men and women alike, nevermind that it's just stupid".

I find it very sexist for a man to take the initiative to fight for woman rights. On the other hand you might argue that the lack of a public female reaction clearly shows the need of a strong man to protect the weak...

I find it very sexist for a man to take the initiative to fight for woman rights. On the other hand you might argue that the lack of a public female reaction clearly shows the need of a strong man to protect the weak...

I'm not "fighting for woman [sic] rights" so much as pointing out totally inappropriate behavior. And you might want to actually read some of the other comments, where women who were actually at this conference are agreeing that RMS' behavior was inappropriate.

But really, this is just another dodge on the part of folks who can't bear to see someone calling a spade a spade here.

If someone is making racist comments, you don't need to stand around waiting for someone of the particular race being abused to show up and say that such comments are wrong. The same applies here.

If Hannes has it his way, not only should we not joke and ban joking, but we also should ban defending the very concept of humour!

This is nonsensical. I, and most of the people I know who make presentations with some regularity, use humor all the time. We attempt, however, to avoid "humor" which is calculated to offend--i.e. jokes at the expense of minorities, or ethnicities, or religions, or one specific gender--and if we do learn that we've offended someone, we attempt to understand why, we apologize, and we endeavor to do better in the future.

Stallman, in contrast, makes no effort whatsoever to understand what the issue is, indulges in transparent self-justification, takes offense himself at the notion that anyone might be offended, and flat-out refuses to apologize.

I believe that it is a tribute to Lefty's character that he understands that everyone including himself is responsible for behaviour like this existing.

Richard Stallman is responsible for his behaviour, but You, I, Lefty and every damned reader of this blog is responsible for the continuation of it if we choose to let it slide. Lefty has decided he is not going to let it slide, and I damn well salute his courage.

Without people from all genders speaking out against sexualised and sexist behaviours in professional settings, arguments against it will only ever be attributed to a woman's emotions (which is sexist), or to a man's bravado (which is equally sexist).

Just as women should not feel forced to tolerate sexualised or sexist behaviours for fear of failing, men should not have to feel that they must tolerate the same behaviours for fear of emasculation. To emasculate a man for speaking against such behaviours is just as sexist as objectifying a woman.

This is nonsensical. I, and most of the people I know who make presentations with some regularity, use humor all the time. We attempt, however, to avoid "humor" which is calculated to offend--i.e. jokes at the expense of minorities, or ethnicities, or religions, or one specific gender

Hannes didn’t express shock about the risqué humour; he expressed shock about the fact that there are people defending Stallmans humour. If he has it his way, he really wants us to not defend the very concept of risqué humour!

Stallman never calculated his humour to offend; I think we established that.

Some of the world’s very best jokes (and Stallman’s is not among them) are “at the expense” of minorities, or ethnicities, or religions, or one specific gender, or people with disabilities, or people with certain political views, or people in general. Or about people with other traits. Or you. Or me. The fact that not everybody gets them, or finds them funny, is really not a good reason to ban them. Chances are that somewhere some people find your humour not very funny too.

If we do learn that we've offended someone, we attempt to understand why, and we endeavor to do better in the future.

If I were to express being offended by Hannes, when he said that defending Stallman on this issue amounts to having sexist tendencies… (I suppose that Hannes actually meant that, I don’t think it was a joke) would that mean that Hannes should now be banned from saying this (and that is what he feels) on this forum? Of course not.

I believe that it is a tribute to Lefty's character that he understands that everyone including himself is responsible for behaviour

I would agree with that if we were talking about actual inappropriate behaviour — such as actually discriminating women or men, homosexuals or heterosexuals, or other minorities or majorities. Everybody should stand up against that.

There are also people here standing up against Lefty’s publication of private emails. In this case, I don’t think Lefty did something unethical, although it’s border line. In any case, even Lefty admits it’s a violation of copyright law. If I had to choose between the two actions (the joke and the e-mail publication) and choose which is the most unethical and therefor the one to stand up against, it definitely would be the e-mail publication.

Mmm, perhaps a crude comparison with regards to the RIAA case (I was trying to dumb it down for you as it appears you don't "get it") but the point still stands. Irrespective of your view or advice, in absolute terms it does rather appear that you have broken the law (based on what you've said) - whether or not the those with the power choose to enforce the law or not and whether they are able to effectively enforce the law, isn't really relevant.

The fact that you sit on such an esteemed body and are happy to behave in this way is .. a little concerning.

Other than to belittle my understanding of the law (which is based on 25 years in the industry and many hours in court) I notice you don't take issue with the REAL points I made ...

Just to add one more point, it doesn't appear that RMS has broken the law by saying what he did, yet it appears that you have knowingly (as you appear to understand the issues and have taken advice) done so in response. So, who exactly do you think is in the "wrong" ??

It seems your viewpoint is that it's not Ok to say what you think, but it is Ok to break the law (as long as you can get away with it) ??

Commercial damage isn't the only consideration with regards to compensation, consider the laws of liable and defamation where awards are made without any implication of commercial loss.

Take a look at the site for harveyingram.com (just for example), in particular the page about Reputation management, Defamation and Privacy.

1. Was you actually surprised that RMS made an irrelevant talk with lame jokes, given that it's the same talk every time? Did you know his talk was planned? Why did you not raise the objections before the talk?

2. Do you think pursuing a good goal justifies questionable things like publishing private email and offending folks in comments that disagree with you? Words like "delusions" or "no idea what you're talking about" are outright offensive.

What is the whole point of this fuss? That you are politically correct? Or, do you expect from somebody who has done so much for the freedom to be a saint? Or do you have any sense of humour? Or, do you think because you are a member of the Gnome team you must speak for women? If you are nitpicking about politeness, how about learning not to publish personal communications without the permission of the other party?

@Anonymous: I guess it's because the first time is either the only one (seeing RMS eat his nose droppings too, but that's another issue, especially when speaking about "logiciel pwiwateuh ;))" or a clear sign of lack of judgement.when you go see RMS at a conference, you expect him, 26 years after THE day, to be at least not that clueless). If he wants to give a one-man show that never evolved in nearly 3 decades, he has the right to; BUT the very fact that he is invited to a TECH conference should give him at least an hint on the seriousness he's expected to carry. Blatantly coming like a bug, announcing he will talk about "Free Software" and deal his crap St-IGNUcius shitload, may have made his fellow MIT hairly-curly printer engineers 2 decades ago, it's not even remotely relevant now.So to summarize: he's invited, paid and fed, by a community he founded and funded, by a community he keeps giving lessons of political and moralo-ethical behaviour to, and to meet the terms of this friendly and respectful invitation, he's rude, he's late on schedule (same thing last year in LSM), forcing the staff to change any other schedule, and he gives the same crapload of old, ancient humour that may have lasted at best one hour in the book of funny things. In my native language, we call that "connard". Jackass, parasite.I can't imagine how many here lurk for any occasion to praise their God of Anti-Conservatism (and Nose Dropping Diner :))So yes, maybe Lefty knew, but everyone's got the right to hope that someone she respects enough to pay for, to be a human being from time to time.Last but not least: if anyone here seriously thinks, this man is still relevant about Free Software, please refrain from now on on talking about it, just go trapeze in a circus.

Richard stallman seems to be quite right. Virgin EMAC is correct. I met one woman among the few thousands I have known who understands technology. The rest play solitaire. Some even need help starting it or even finding it.

Richard stallman seems to be quite right. (…)I met one woman among the few thousands I have known who understands technology. The rest play solitaire. Some even need help starting it or even finding it.

I know men who only use computers to play solitaire as well. That’s no reason to generalise their use of technology to their entire gender.

If you must sexist views (anonymously), please do not falsely attribute them to Stallman.

Some years ago, Lefty was threatening to sue members of an Anthroposophical mailing list who published his private emails. Lefty was asking $5,000 per email as damages. It was quite a kerfluffle. Here it is, somehow preserved:

@Anonymous: the pb with you guys, is that you can't stand someone touch RMS. So as soon as someone state the obvious (he's a dirty man, who eats whatever insect crawls in his hair, he's antipathetic, he's rude, he's kinda selfish -- funny for someone that self-righteous -- he's a parasite, and he can't admit any wrongdoing -- color me convinced that he's become the very fraud he would tell us to despise), you just go dig on the OP for something not relevant here.You just can't answer this simple question: what in the last ten years has RMS done worth a dime, worth you lose your credibility defending him like he's flawless (funny for someone who would tell you to despise religious bigotry) while he behaves like a jackass ?

Some years ago, Lefty was threatening to sue members of an Anthroposophical mailing list who published his private emails. Lefty was asking $5,000 per email as damages.

It was a publication fee, not "damages", and it was instituted after the moderator of the mailing list in question had been sent, and had ignored, numerous "cease and desist" notices. This was done at the request of the members of the mailing list which I ran, after many of their own postings--which _did_ contain information which was both private and personal--were reproduced without permission and over the explicit and repeated objections of their authors.

Worked, too. However, it's not especially relevant here. As I've said, Stallman is entirely welcome to send me a DMCA "takedown notice" if he cares to (which would have been a more efficient and effective remedy, had it been available in 1995)...

"RMS really that horrible of a person? […] but still he's a decent human being, give the man a break."

Definitely not. I've seen him being very rude with a woman who has a baby at a conference. He was a complete asshole with the wife of a ethousiast who invited him for the night. This woman don't want to see him anymore, never. I also remember him refusing to answer a (interessant) question about patents because the guy was not speaking a good english. He was so rude and did so bad joke about the accent of the participant that the guy was completely humiliated, standing with the microphone in the middle of the audience. In general, he admit to hate children and babies and it looks like he's very often rude with women.

I quitted the conference and never attended one of his talk anymore. All my friends agree with me. I've seen him once more in a hall and, guess what, he was not gently at all to walk in the crowd.

This guy acts like a complete jerk when in public (I don't know him privately). Before I saw him for the first time, I wouldn't believe what friends were telling me. But, indeed, this guy deserve no respect at all, at least not anymore.

Not sexist at all. "Emac virgins" is a pun against the christian story about Virgin Mary that happens to be female. RMS explains this in both letters. Let me go one step further. It can be interpreted as a joke against the sexist christian view of virginity (there is no such thing as male virginity for christians).

And BTW, we have the right to make fun of religion (just as we have the right to make fun of the Flat Earth Society and people who believe that elephants can fly).

)Robert Tolz (RTolz TNSJ-LAW.COM) wrote )))A week or so ago, I made a comment that I had never recalled anyone)being dis-invited from this list by Dan.))) I subsequently received private email from a former participant))indicating that Dan had removed him from the list for filing a complaint))with Dan's web host.))It's no secret. When David Schlesinger (Lefty Redux) made repeated,)serious attempts to shut down the list, he was reluctantly excluded. He)also made repeated demands for tens of thousands of dollars from other)list members for daring to re-post the nasty e-mails he would not stop)sending privately to list members. I call these extortion threats.

Reminds me of what the fascist Steiner/ Waldorf/ Anthroposphy apologist andpropagandist David Schlesinger, aka "Lefty" and "Lefty Redux", said when hekicked me off the Waldorf list:

Just for the record, a check of the archives indicates that the first stoneis almost always cast by a Defender of the Faith. The archetype was thefascist slime-slinger David "Lefty" Schlesinger, way back 3-1/2 years agoin the first weeks of the list's existence.

The vilification of me and others by such Steiner/ Waldorf/Anthroposophical mafiosi as the fascist "Waldorf List" owner David "Lefty"Schlesinger (who was on this list until he was finally booted for going toofar) was really something to behold.

With a twinkle in his eye and a skip in his step, RMS slammed his sky-blue Chevette's rusted-out car door and turned on heel toward the MIT Zoo entrance. Today was a Sunday, and RMS had decided the daily stresses of Free Software, the GPL, and his crazy drug-smoking habits could go away for just one afternoon while he enjoyed the zoo.

"That'll be twenty-five dollars, sir," the lady at the admission booth said glumly. She looked at RMS expectantly.

"I was expecting this zoo to be Free," RMS stated loudly, eyes darting around to gauge onlookers' reactions. There were none: RMS's capital F had went unnoticed. "Can you ensure me that this money will not help fund –"

The admissions lady cut him off. "Twenty-five dollars, or twenty bucks with a Bawls can," the lady cut in.

With a grumble and shake of his beard, RMS handed over twenty five of his hard-earned dollars. Considering that the GPL works to unemploy programmers, one must wonder where this money came from.

By evening, RMS found himself in front of the penguin exhibit. He felt himself start to sweat, which would have been no surprise — his thick, full, grizzly beard was worth a thousand down comforters — except that he was wearing only a pair of nylon biking shorts and a travel pack around his waist. He stared at his hands. What was wrong?

"Awk" a nearby bird squawked. RMS wheeled in the direction the screech had come from. He was met with the steely, unfeeling stares of a penguin. "Awk! Ooooh God, the penguin said awk... Lord, lord lord, it's GNU/Linux. The penguin is Tux!!!" RMS blurted out. He felt dizzy, and cold sweat now washed over his brittle, hairy chest. He looked this way and that. From nearby a bird again squawked.

"Awk! Awk! Awwwwk!!!"

RMS ran as fast as his atrophied hippie-programmer legs could carry him, right through a gate and into an exhibit. He realized what he had done, and before he could turn around, he heard a low, ominous sound. Like the Devil's riding mower.

"Moooooooooooooooo!"

RMS gasped and darted his eyes around him as he stood deathly still.

"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

RMS was standing in the Gnu section, and it seemed these bull yaks were in rut and ready to mate with the first hairy thing with a hole in its center they found. Bad luck for RMS and his beard. Just then he felt cloven hooves push him down, and the world became fuzzy. RMS blacked out and remembered no more.<

"I’d save the ASCII totem for an occasion just prior to your court)) )date, in the event that ever actually comes to pass: you’ll need all)) )the good luck you can scrape together.)) ))) )–)) )Lefty Redux [gYon-Pa] (lefty apple.com), (dns netcom.com))) )C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.)))) I was utterly shocked by the vicious animosity of these messages. In all)) honesty, I have find them to be quite intimidating. They have affected my)) sleep and my appetite. I do not know to what lengths this man will go to)) for retaliation. I hope that his anger is limited to email and I have not)) exhibited foolish bravado in posting these. However, I will not participate)) in his abuse by continuing to allow him to send me these types of messages)) privately with the thought that his threats of extortion will keep me from)) sharing. Every abuser needs to be drug into a public forum posthaste. It is)) only in a public arena that this type of behavior can be halted.)))) I hope that others of you that have been subjected to this type of abuse)) will ignore his threats and make his behavior public.)))) Kathy Sutphen"

Its extremely relevant, Lefty. And that you would delete it is troubling. You must really fear these troubling echoes of hypocrisy from your past? Please do not stoop that low, as I respect you and all you do for Gnome; and I would not want to lose that respect.

RMS may have a dismissive attitude towards religion in general (or at least claim to have), but he reserves particular disdain for Catholicism. This is twice in less than two years that he's gone out of his way to insult his Catholic hosts.

Lefty your argument would have more clout if I didn't read a couple posts down how a troll on a mailing list ruined your vacation.RMS made a fool of himself and instead of seeing how the whole performance was irrelevant and that RMS did try to make a albeit un funny joke, everyone is caught up in the gossip.And if you wish to discuss sexism in the open source community, what about projects such ubuntu woman? Are woman not capable of using the plain vanilla ubuntu distribution? Just as slapping pink paint on a hammer or a drill does not make it anymore "Woman Friendly™" the same goes for computers, I find this offensive.

But your post has neither to do with computers or feminism now does it Lefty?

I think that you (Lefty) should realise that, from what I read, you offend a lot of people with this blog post and the following comments. If the standard procedure when offending someone is to apologise then you should too.

I'm not going to comment any more on the subject as things are already perfectly clear to me. I'm just going to give you an advice on (and to) the people who use offensive language purposely to offend.

"Don't argue with fools coz' people from a distance can't tell who is who"

i think RMS is rather easily anticipated. you guys shouldn't have invited him if you don't want comedy. (yea yea, its not comedy for you. you're "offended")

it's really sad that the mono (anti-freetard) group had sunk to the level of PR warfare against FLOSS icons. Most p.g.o members seem to have considerably different (read: corporate) ethos than the userbase.

Did you ever hear jokes about being blind told by blind people? They are what you would call denigrating.Did you ever hear jokes told by monks on religion? You would not dare tell these in public.Did you ever hear feminists tell jokes on women? You wouldn't dream off telling your wife.

So let us leave it for what it is, other people can defend themselves, thinking they cannot is a flaw in your character.

I think that you (Lefty) should realise that, from what I read, you offend a lot of people with this blog post and the following comments. If the standard procedure when offending someone is to apologise then you should too.

I think that you (Lefty) should realise that, from what I read, you offend a lot of people with this blog post and the following comments. If the standard procedure when offending someone is to apologise then you should too.

Try and see whether you can discern what the distinctions are between an individual posting on his own blog, and a (supposed) "leader of the Free Software movement" giving a keynote address, on the organizers' dime, at one of the most important conferences the community holds.

Take all the time you need. But don't hold your breath waiting for an apology. Especially when you're posting anonymously.

There's such a thing as being overly politically correct. Who exactly are you trying to garner favor with by posting your white-knight emails? being big brother or the guardian of "proper comedic value" sometimes comes off as more than a little overbearing. BLEH, let it slide, and de-stress a little bit. just because someone once made an off-taste joke doesn't mean that that set of words defines who they are. ugh.

Mmm, perhaps a crude comparison with regards to the RIAA case (I was trying to dumb it down for you as it appears you don't "get it") but the point still stands.

Impossible, there wasn't a point in there to begin with. And that comparison wasn't "crude", it was "pointless and inapplicable".

...in absolute terms it does rather appear that you have broken the law...

Indeed, at least in some extremely abstract sense. For the record,I've also jay-walked, exceeded the speed limit, and returned library books late. It would seem that you, in contrast, have never failed to completely and fully observe every law on the books, is that right?

The fact that you sit on such an esteemed body and are happy to behave in this way is .. a little concerning.

I'd write the President of the Internet, right away.

Other than to belittle my understanding of the law (which is based on 25 years in the industry and many hours in court) I notice you don't take issue with the REAL points I made...

It was quite a long comment, but surprisingly point-free. As for your "understanding of the law"...

Commercial damage isn't the only consideration with regards to compensation, consider the laws of liable and defamation where awards are made without any implication of commercial loss.

Well, I can't help but find it intriguing that in that "25 years in the industry" you've failed to manage to discover the correct spelling of the term "libel", nor the fact that libel is a form of defamation, not a separate thing.

It's likewise surprising that you seem unaware that it's impossible to libel someone by quoting their own words.

Moreover, I can't help but wonder how, in that 25 years of experience, you managed to avoid learning that the bar for defamation of a public figure--and Stallman is, for better or worse, most certainly a public figure--is vastly higher than that for others. Specifically, you'd have to show a clear and malicious intent to defame, just for starts. My quoting Stallman's own emails certainly won't get you there.

If anyone's defaming Mr. Stallman here, it can only be Mr. Stallman himself.

Also a bit surprising is your apparent infamiliarity with the notion of "Fair Use", which arguably covers my reproduction of those emails here.

Maybe you should have paid a little more attention while you were in the courtroom.

But as long as we're here, perhaps you'd like to detail the specific fashion in which you believe I've committed "liable" against Mr. Stallman. While your at it, please detail what elements of these emails you feel are "private".

@flauran:Know what happens when we women try to defend ourselves? We're told we're just being oversensitive, and our concerns are dismissed because "she's a woman, must be PMS." The only way to get guys to listen is to get a guy to say it.

Although RMS's comments you described do concern me your response was also poor. My first though was "well, if you talk like that he sure won't take any of your comments to heart". It seems you wrote the email more to amuse your audience than to inform Richard Stallman of how he was being insensitive. Maybe next time try to imagine your RMS receiving the email and think about how you would react to the overall tone of the email. Your email didn't help the situation at all and will probably just make him more resistant to any future attempts to make him aware that he is alienating members of the open source community. It is also very rude to publish private emails on the internet without permission. (i assume you didnt' get permission since its not mentioned in the article.)

Maybe next time try to imagine your RMS receiving the email and think about how you would react to the overall tone of the email.

Perhaps, if Mr. Stallman had shown even the slightest glimmer of making an effort to imagine his audience listening to his off-topic "comedy" and thinking about how they would react to the overall tone of it, I might have done that.

Know what happens when we women try to defend ourselves? We're told we're just being oversensitive, and our concerns are dismissed because "she's a woman, must be PMS." The only way to get guys to listen is to get a guy to say it.

@Mackenzie, for what it's worth, I don't get the impression that the folks who are incapable of listening to you are having a lot of luck listening to me, either...

I'm pretty impressed that the publication of a couple of emails containing absolutely zero personal or private information seems to bother some folks a lot more than the content of Mr. Stallman's "keynote". Not postively impressed, but nonetheless...

I have to take RMS' side on this.He did response in a very briefly manner, simply dismissing your point entirely.which I think is his god givin right if he feels he did nothing wrong.I feel people shouldn't get so wound up about words, they should rather take a laugh at it than a frown because you know - don't worry, be happy

Again, I'm very interested in understanding how it's somehow just fine to take a Metallica album, turn it into MP3s, throw 'em all into BitTorrent and "share them with your neighbor"--a sort of activity which I believe Stallman supports--but it's somehow a serious problem for me to share emails (containing neither private nor personal information) with my neighbor.

In the first case you are stealing a few bucks from a bunch of rich guys.

In the second case you are violating right to privacy of an individual.

Thanks for publishing this Lefty - Your communications to RMS are clear and he is avoiding the main concern, very likely because he knows he's wrong.

Turning up to an opensource event, especially a large one with 500+ people in it, and discovering there are only 10 women is something I'm used to. But once it turns into jokes about a duty to remove a woman's virginity from her, I feel distinctly uncomfortable and don't want to attend such events.

They happen from time to time, stupid rape jokes by 20-something newbs at conferences. When they happen I get out of the situation quickly. .

I don't expect to receive such behaviour from the leaders in Open Source. RMS was out of line. I know he's going to be quoted by drunken idiots at the next opensource conference I attend.

Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group, and they are more common than many people realize. I have more than once heard a man say that he doesn't make that kind of joke, and then hours or minutes later, hear the same person make a joke about pregnant women or PMS. Sometime he just doesn't realize that he made a sexist joke, for example, "blonde jokes" are actually "dumb women" jokes. Sometimes he tells me that it's okay to make a sexist joke if it's true, or it's funny (funny to whom?). What some people fail to realize is that jokes about gender of any sort almost always make fun of women, and will make most women angry, regardless of the context. It doesn't help to first make a sexist joke about men and then one about women.

You can argue that women shouldn't be so sensitive (and I will disagree with you) but even then, regardless of should or should not, your comments and jokes are driving women away. If that's not what you want, then don't make sexist jokes. If you're not sure if your joke is sexist, find something else to say.

The very next suggestion is to protest the telling of sexist jokes (which is exactly what Lefty has done).

To quote:

The next time you see someone joking about women on your local mailing list or in person, complain about it. It's difficult to do this without making yourself a target for ridicule, but it's even more difficult for a woman to do the same thing. Women keep silent when we see sexist jokes because if we protest, we will immediately be attacked for being over-sensitive, uptight, or a "feminazi."

This jives with what Mackenzie said above.

It also perfectly describes what many of the people attacking Lefty have done.

Some of you wonder why women haven't complained earlier - with the kind of personal attacks and insults that Lefty is getting, it's really no wonder why they didn't. Who wants to be personally attacked/flamed with the vitriol that some of the anonymous flamers on this blog have shown?

Instead of speaking up, many might simply become discouraged and leave the FLOSS community altogether.

dude, you're a freaking moron for printing this waste of space. get a sense of humor or at the least get over yourself and your self righteous indignation in an obvious effort to puff yourself. did you go to stallman directly after the speech and ask him up front, you know, man to man? of course not. take the plank out of your own eye so the verse goes. if you are aware of stallman's speaking style (and no doubt you are), then this cannot really be of shock value. again, i say you are a sexist bating, religion bating moron.

happy day to you idiot.

women are more than able to defend themselves. they do not need you as its' spokesperson.

@others: Please stop saying women can defend themselves. They should not have to defend themselves. When you are dealing with offensive behaviour it is much better if somebody not from that group defends them. Otherwise they will be dismissed as whiners etc (see also Mackenzies post).

The same with religion. If you want to have a debate with muslims/christians or whatever about their beliefs, they can defend themselves. But if somebody offends them, it is much better if an atheist complains to the offender.

i don't need you to apologize for me brenda. if women want equal rights (and they should and do for the most part), then they are quite capable of defending themselves. it comes with the package. speak for yourself, not for me. i am speaking to the person who printed these private emails. he is what the majority of those who have commented on this topic have so rightly in their own way called "an idiot". are we so pc that we can't even state our views on the internet without people like you having to go behind us and apologize on our behalf, in effect defending others. why don't you speak for yourself brenda, you certainly don't speak for the majority of us.

brenda said:"i don't expect to receive such behaviour from the leaders in Open Source. RMS was out of line. I know he's going to be quoted by drunken idiots at the next opensource conference I attend."

so is it the LEADERS in open source or is it RMS?

hey brenda, it's real womanly of you to prejudge the supposed upcoming actions of drunken idiots who will be at the next conference. really non judgmental of you. and by the way it's open source, not opensource.

First of all, how the hell do you guys dare to post an _all-biased_ comment? You're not even giving a valid argument! It doesn't contribute to the discussion at all, it's just you showing how dumb you are. (eg anonymous above me).

And what's wrong with defending women? It's *decency*! According to most of you, I can't open a door to a woman without being tagged as sexist. If "Lefty" was a woman, would you be still critisizing his right to defend women and him-... herself?

Also, Stallman does these comments that may or may not be interpreted as sexist. May or may not be considered as insulting. Personally, if I was among the target audience of the "joke", I would just ignore it. Some people wouldn't. What Lefty was doing was suggesting Stallman to apologize to the target audience, even if he didn't mean to do it. It'd leave his ego intact and make the target audience feel better. Everybody happy. Even better, just avoid doing them. He regarded these suggestions as utter non-sense.

Now take yourself as an example. If you insulted a friend of you (intentionally or not. Unless he deserved it), would you apologize? I bet you would.

That's not how a leader should act. He is giving a bad reputation to the Open Source community. In fact, he is acting like religious fanatics who he dislikes so much. He ain't open to reassoning (very open-source...).

Some of you may think I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I am, but atleast my points are well founded. Anyway, I see no way I could agree with Stallman.

Regarding posting e-mails on the internet, --hits "Lefty" with a newspaper-- bad Lefty; don't do that again.

That's what free software is all about. If you don't like it, nobody's going to force it down your throat.

I do agree that RMS's remarks are a bit rude (it was a bad joke by the way). But that's just him. That's the way he jokes. If you don't like to listen to him, DONT. Nobody cares. You have the freedom not to.

>>But as long as we're here, perhaps you'd like to detail the specific fashion in which you believe I've committed "liable" against Mr. Stallman. While your at it, please detail what elements of these emails you feel are "private".

Eh?

Are you deliberately mis-reading my emails or just trying to be even more offensive for the sake of it?

I did not say you had committed "liable" against RMS I was simply pointing out YOUR ASSERTION that because your actions caused any direct financial damage, you would not be subject to a claim for damages from RMS .. and I mistakenly thought a simple example showing ( lack of financial loss != immunity from prosecution ) might help.

Maybe if you actually read what people write and try to understand it .. (?!)

With regards to which parts of the emails are private, ALL THE PARTS ARE PRIVATE! Do you not get this? When you write an email, you own it. When you send it to someone, you are giving them explicit permission to read it. You are NOT giving them implicit permission to publish it, technically you're not even giving them permission to forward it on to anyone else.

I've spent most of my life working on / with and developing Open Source software .. he ain't my leader.

>He is giving a bad reputation to the Open Source community.

Urm, no, Lefty is trying give HIM a bad reputation. Whether he is also giving himself a bad reputation is debatable - but HE is NOT the Open Source Community - he just started it.

>In fact, he is acting like religious fanatics who he dislikes so much. He ain't open to reassoning

From what I read I'm inclined to agree with you .. this however does not excuse Lefty's posts.

What I'm trying to figure out is why Lefty has it in for RMS. Maybe RMS's replies didn't show the proper level of respect for such an important Gnome .. dunno .. on the other hand, maybe RMS ran over his cat.

hahaha! now that's funny. RMS may not be your leader, but he damn well should be. he didn't start the open source movement, he started the FSF. i know you try to make them both out to be one and the same but they certainly are not.

and you don't have to worry about RMS giving the open source movement a bad name, they do a great job of it all by themselves by engaging in this bunch of crappola.

hey i just figured it out. you consider email to be code and as such must make it freely available.

Huh. I'm mostly surprised by all the fanboy-ism here. As far as Stallman, nearly every remark I've ever heard about him was negative. I always found that a little suspect until he toddled onto the OpenBSD mailing list and stirred up a veritable shit-storm for some idiotic reason. I'm sure it made sense to him.

He did there what he did with this correspondence. He never seems to think he's wrong or just doesn't care. He's frequently dismissive, inconsiderate, nonsensical, goes off on tangents and is occasionally offensive. He doesn't back down, ever.

How do you reason with someone like this? I'd rather be insulted by Linus. At least then it'd probably be funny and make sense.

I did not say you had committed "liable" against RMS I was simply pointing out YOUR ASSERTION that because your actions caused any direct financial damage, you would not be subject to a claim for damages from RMS .. and I mistakenly thought a simple example showing ( lack of financial loss != immunity from prosecution ) might help.

First of all, copyright violation is a tort, not a criminal act, so it isn't "prosecuted" at all.

Second, if Stallman (or his legal counsel) wished to bring suit against me, the very best result that they could come away with would be nothing more than an order from the court that I remove the material, period, end of story.

The problem with your "simple examples" is that they show (in spite of your anonymous 25 years experience) pretty thorough-going ignorance of the actual law.

(For what it's worth, I'm a member of the FSF-Europe's Legal and Licensing Network, and participated in their workshop back in April. And I'm not posting anonymously, so my claims can be checked.)

Now, on the subject of the publication of email: this is, at best, nothing more than a custom, "netiquette", if you will. Folks may consider it rude, but that's about the worst thing you can say about it. Publishing actual private information, say a personal address or phone number, from an email would arguably be an invasion of privacy; I have not done that. I'm amazed that some folks (folks who, hilariously, tell me my "value system" is out of kilter) get much more excited over a couple of emails than they do over the incident itself. It's quite revealing, and it says nothing good about the folks who take this position.

i. Why is it people did not stand up and complain or walk out?

Many did walk out during the talk. Many complained about it afterward. Of course, Stallman did not stick around nor did he spend any time with the cnference attendees. He was hustled off to a "press event", and that was the last we saw of him.

ii. Why are you not addressing your complaint to the organisers of the event who will have known the content in advance and who were ultimately responsible for inviting him?

I have spoken directly to the organizers. There's general agreement that the "keynote" was offensive and out of place.

iii. When are we going to see your apology to RMS for publishing his emails without permission?

When Hell freezes over. You folks are just back-seat drivers here, the only one with the actual standing (it's a legal term, look it up) to complain is Stallman himself, and I haven't heard from him.

iv. Please can you confirm for us whether the Gnome Foundation is backing your complaint or whether this is purely a personal issue?

I don't really understand the question. If you're asking whether the GNOME Foundation Board is going to pass a motion to censure Stallman or something, then I doubt that will happen, nor should it, really--that's not what the Foundation is about. However, I've spoken to every member of the Board and the Executive Director of the Foundation, and they agree with me, not with you or Stallman.

>Again, I'm very interested in >understanding how it's somehow just fine to >take a Metallica album, turn it into MP3s, >throw 'em all into BitTorrent and "share >them with your neighbor"--a sort of >activity which I believe Stallman >supports--but it's somehow a serious >problem for me to share emails (containing >neither private nor personal information) >with my neighbor.

In the first case you are stealing a few bucks from a bunch of rich guys.

Uh huh. And when a million people do it, they're collectively stealing a few million bucks from a bunch of rich guys. And violating their copyright. But that's evidently just fine with you. Breaking multiple laws (since commercial copyright infringement actually is a felony) is okay, somehow.

In the second case you are violating right to privacy of an individual.

At worst, I committed an act counter to generally-accepted "netiquette". I didn't post his phone number, his address or his social security number, so it's difficult to see what aspects of this individual's privacy you're all hot and bothered about.

Both are not correct, but the second one feels more serious to me.

Then I would suggest that you seriously need to think about why that it.

If you're more concerned about a couple of emails containing nothing of either a personal or private nature than you are about actions which perpetuate the situation where men outnumber women in open source project by a ratio of twenty to one, then you're not thinking clearly.

And if you think that outright theft is somehow better than publishing emails, even if it's just when you're stealing from "a bunch of rich guys", then you're not thinking clearly.

And if you think it's okay to violate anyone's copyright except Stallman's, then you're not thinking clearly.

Please try and see whether you can manage to get your head sorted out.

...what did the women you talked at the conference to about this issue say?

The most common thing I was told, and those comments are echoed here, is that it made them extremely uncomfortable. Some put it in stronger terms, some much stronger ones. All agreed that it certainly didn't encourage women to participate in free software projects, and would probably drive a woman who was considering getting involved away from such involvement.

Guys, don't argue with monotards, they are brain washed, believe only on one thing; Mono the God. Now Lefty is trying to convince us that he is defending women, really? are we assumed to believe that? and it is a mere coincidence that the so offensive talk by RMS (in which he almost repeats what we have said, including jokes, hundreds of time before and people still invite him and attend his talks) is the talk where he says bad things about Mono! Oh my God, how dare he to offend our God we monotards, lets start a dirty war on him claiming he is a sexist offending women, publishing private emails (where he says concisely and clearly it isn't about women, but we will ignore that any way). I got sick of all this s**t, I got sick of mono, I got sick of monotards with hidden agenda attacking any one and every not agreeing with them!

Guys, don't argue with monotards, they are brain washed, believe only on one thing; Mono the God.

Khaled, considering that there's not a single word in any of this regarding Mono, you really have to bend over backwards (displaying your obsessiveness and paranoia in the process) to make the case that this is really about Mono rather than what it plainly and clearly says it's about.

Let me be abundantly clear: I don't care strongly about Mono. I have no objection to it, and I use F-Spot and Tomboy, but if the decision were made to remove it from Ubuntu (the distribution I typically use), I'd be fine with that.

I do object to folks like Roy Schestowitz using falsehood and defamation to attempt to make their "case", I likewise object to anti-Mono trolls disrupting the mailing lists I read, and I strenuously object to attempts on the part of the anti-Mono crowd to interfere with the lives and livelihoods of those who hold other opinions, for the reasons I've detailed in another posting.

So, no, this has absolutely nothing to do with Mono. The fact that you seem intent on casting it as that pretty strongly underscores the fact that your technical "arguments" against Mono are pretty completely without substance, though.

No one is above criticism, not me, and not Stallman. If you want to respond to that criticism, have at it, but don't try to sidestep the actual issue here: Stallman's gratuitous denigration of women (as well as religion, and, since Spain is a predominantly Catholic country, many of our hosts here) in a keynote address at a major technical conference.

@Mike: well said, sir, well said. On the one hand, we have the mountain: the bizarre attitudes that some men have (and others think women should have to put up with) in the open source / free software community. If you don't think this is a serious problem, then you are part of it.

Then, we have the molehill: the publication of a few private emails that serve to illustrate the problem above.

>First of all, copyright violation is a tort, not a criminal act, so it isn't "prosecuted" at all.

It's a Criminal offense to intentionally infringe for purposes of commercial advantage or personal financial gain.

I don't know whether this could be proven in your case, but your statement in the general context given is not accurate.

>Second, if Stallman (or his legal counsel) wished to bring suit against me, the very best result that they could come away with would be nothing more than an order from the court that I remove the material, period, end of story.

If he sent you an email asking you to take it down and you did, sure. If you didn't and forced him to go to court, then again, inaccurate - there is a possibility you could have court costs awarded against you.

.. so attending a "legal workshop" makes you an expert on the law? .. have a read of www.copyright.gov and see how that ties in with your statements.

In particular - just for general interest;

§ 504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits (c) (2)

§ 505. Remedies for infringement: Costs and attorney's fees

§ 506. Criminal offenses

>Now, on the subject of the publication of email: this is, at best, nothing more than a custom,

That's strange, there does seem to be a pretty rigid legal definition of works covered by copyright, and there's no escaping the fact that by default emails clearly fall within this definition.

>Many did walk out during the talk.

I take it these were the 100 people you talked to afterwards .. strange you didn't mention this earlier [?] - so what was RMS's reaction to having 100 people get up and walk out?

>Many complained about it afterward.

Sure, we've covered this.

>He was hustled off to a "press event", and that was the last we saw of him.

>I have spoken directly to the organizers. There's general agreement that the "keynote" was offensive and out of place.

So they won't be inviting him back?

>When Hell freezes over.

I guess unlikely with Global warming an' all. Obviously you don't think one is due ... odd that you are critical of RMS for taking exactly the same stance.

>You folks are just back-seat drivers here, the only one with the actual standing (it's a legal term, look it up) to complain is Stallman himself, and I haven't heard from him.

Yes, unlike you I do actually recognise the term without having to look it up. In additional I understand that anyone can complain, but only RMS had the option of obtaining a legal remedy.

>I don't really understand the question.

I'm pretty sure you do.

>If you're asking whether the GNOME Foundation Board is going to pass a motion to censure Stallman or something, then I doubt that will happen, nor should it

No. clearly I wasn't asking this.

>However, I've spoken to every member of the Board and the Executive Director of the Foundation, and they agree with me, not with you or Stallman.

That was what I was asking. You are saying the entire Board agree that (a) it's ok to publish other people's emails without their consent and (b) someone (you?) should be allowed to control what other people say.

(in summary these were the two points I and a number of others were trying to make)

This is a pretty astounding statement from the Gnome board!

Everyone you talked to after the talk was offended .. and the entire board agrees with you and as you've pointed out specifically, not with "me" ... I'm sort of assuming to disagree with me they would all have has to read this posting .. yet nobody seems to have identified themselves as a member of the board and specifically associated themselves with your comments.

1) Publishing the email is ok since the subject it addresses is of a public nature, nothing personal was divulged in the email that would invade anyones privacy. Further the nature of the email makes it obvious that his replies would be scrutinized publicly, and that is probably the reason he kept dodging the "women" question. Stallman's own supporters consider him as rude, and yes his comments could be considered rude and should not have been given in a technical conference - that shows the man suffers from a lack of judgement.

2) I'm sick of people defending women right, left and center. Wether women were present or not does not make a difference, they should be well capable of defending themselves, and if they can't then that just proves the point. I see people jumping up and down because of Stallman's "demeaning" comments about women, but the same people are and many women themselves feel excited to be viewing smut and porn where women are truelly being demeaned. If Stallman suffers from lack of judgement, which he does, then so do you and your supporters (women included).

@anonymous: you failed to accept the very fact that RMS doesn't really care about anything outside his dirt layer. He doesn't care about poor people being crushed under their own houses after an earthquake, why would he care about a bunch o'people wrongly shocked by his constant mockery ? he's become the very thing he despised: a guru of braindead, willing to die, offer their lives for his or his sake.Someone who can't pass beyond paranoia to the point of resorting to wget his way on the internet when forced to is a retard, period.

Lefty, stop embarrasing yourself. This is not even an issue in other countries. Why do people in your country bother so much? Can't you just sit down, relax, and have some beer? Too much noise for this crap.

It's a Criminal offense to intentionally infringe for purposes of commercial advantage or personal financial gain.

I don't know whether this could be proven in your case, but your statement in the general context given is not accurate.

Given the content of the message in question, and the fact that there's no possible way I can financially gain from them, either at Stallman's expense or otherwise, it's a bit odd that you "don't know whether this could be proven".

If he sent you an email asking you to take it down and you did, sure. If you didn't and forced him to go to court, then again, inaccurate - there is a possibility you could have court costs awarded against you.

A vanishingly small possibility, in my estimation. First off, as far as I know, Stallman (unlike the rest of us mere mortals) gets his legal representation gratis, courtesy of the SFLC. Secondly, given the situation, I'd put my money on the proposition that the court would view such a suit as a frivolous and egregious waste of its time.

.. so attending a "legal workshop" makes you an expert on the law? .. have a read of www.copyright.gov and see how that ties in with your statements.

Er, no. The European Legal and Licensing Network is a by-invitation-only group of about 100 attorneys involved in open source and free software legal affairs.

At the most recent (again, invitation-only) workshop it held in April, there were three non-lawyers present: Harald Welte and Armijn van Hemel, who were there to present on behalf of gpl-violations.org, and myself. My inclusion in this group is a clear recognition that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to free and open source software licensing in particular, and intellectual property law in general.

§ 504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits (c) (2)

Oooh, someone's mastered Google and the art of copying sub-section titles. Impressive. But irrelevant. And a complete failure in terms of showing any actual understanding.

§ 506. Criminal offenses

See? That's what I mean. You haven't a clue what you're posting about. Please detail for me how section 506 applies in this specific case.

That's strange, there does seem to be a pretty rigid legal definition of works covered by copyright, and there's no escaping the fact that by default emails clearly fall within this definition.

Oh, email is indeed copyrighted, as I've cheerfully admitted. Most people object, however, on grounds of "privacy" and "politeness", and that's just netiquette. Do try to keep up.

I take it these were the 100 people you talked to afterwards .. strange you didn't mention this earlier [?] - so what was RMS's reaction to having 100 people get up and walk out?

Er, no, and I've no idea on what basis you make a leap like that. That's not the level of reasoning I usually see in a legal mind. Odd, that.

A visible number, perhaps a dozen or three total, walked out at various points throughout the talk. There was no reaction that I saw from Stallman. I'm sure he's quite used to people walking out on him, and based on his emails, I'd bet that he views it as some sort of weird validation.

Mmm, I wouldn't quit my day job if I were you (assuming you actually have one--you seem to have an awful lot of time to produce irrelevancies of this sort). You're clearly neither qualified as an interpreter or as a psychic.

So they won't be inviting him back?

I'd be astounded if they did, based on my conversations here.

odd that you are critical of RMS for taking exactly the same stance.

Again, what individuals do on their personal blogs is one thing; what a "leader of the Free Software movement" does in the context of a keynote (for which he's been flown, fed, housed and funded) is very much another. It's surprising you can't distinguish betwen the two.

Yes, unlike you I do actually recognise the term without having to look it up.

>If you're asking whether the GNOME Foundation Board is going to pass a motion to censure Stallman or something, then I doubt that will happen, nor should it

No. clearly I wasn't asking this.

I'd like to inform you that you greatly overestimate your level of clarity, as well as your supposed legal expertise.

>However, I've spoken to every member of the Board and the Executive Director of the Foundation, and they agree with me, not with you or Stallman.

That was what I was asking. You are saying the entire Board agree that (a) it's ok to publish other people's emails without their consent and (b) someone (you?) should be allowed to control what other people say.

I don't ask the Board permission to publish things in my own blog. No one wants to "control what other people say", either, and no one's suggested anything of the sort. I have suggested that based on his performance, Stallman should never, ever, be asked to speak at another Desktop Summit, and the folks with whom I've spoken feel similarly.

This is a pretty astounding statement from the Gnome board!

Perhaps less astounding given that it's purely a product of your imagination.

Maybe you exaggerate just a little ??

Maybe you should learn to read for comprehension, rather than pretending, ineptly, to be an internet lawyer, O Nameless One. You're liable to continue making an even bigger fool of yourself, I fear.

In any case, I've wasted too much time on you already. When the comments have gotten so lengthy that the responses will no longer fit into a single comment, enough is more than enough.

If you want to post with an actual identity, perhaps I'll taking your further comments under consideration, but failing that, you're done; someone should stick a fork in you.

No, it's not: it's a completely transparent effort to "kill the messenger" because the message is making you excruciatingly uncomfortable.

And that you would delete it is troubling. You must really fear these troubling echoes of hypocrisy from your past?

Since there's no hypocrisy, and since I'm not "troubled" by any of this, I don't "fear" it at all.

Please do not stoop that low, as I respect you and all you do for Gnome; and I would not want to lose that respect.

Calling me a hypocrite is a pretty odd way of showing respect. And who the hell are you supposed to be, anyway, Anonymous-san? I'm not sure I'd even want your "respect".

Tell you what: if anyone wants to continue in this vein, go ahead and dig up what you can on my supposed "hypocrisy" and "nasty history" with women, ideally something a little more current than (one side of) a ten-year-old flame war.

Then, I'll go and see what I can dig up to support my contention that Stallman shows consistent insensitivity to women and others. Some examples might include his chortling over a church full or worshippers killed in a Peruvian earthquake, referring to a woman with a child as a "breeder", berating a questioner for whom English was not a native language, etc.

I doubt if it is a comment on Japanese people since Lefty is partially Japanese and speaks the language. I suggest it is a turn of phrase.

Lefty, Stallman is an odious troll and has been since I was a kid (and you were much younger). As the official wingnut of the open source movement, he should be viewed at a distance for historic value and unintentional comic relief as a species of troglodyte. I quit listening to him somewhere around the time of his infatuation with "Doctress" Neutopia, another example of the same species. His historonics around Linux years ago and how it owed him everything (and hence was "GNU/Linux") and his shrill attacks only cemented my thoughts on him.

As long as the trolls here think it is fine to make sexist or religious jokes during speeches at technical conferences, women (and others being the butt of jokes) will continue to find somewhere else to be. I suspect that if Stallman was making Jewish jokes, some here would think that was fine too and ask why the Jews weren't speaking up about it (along with throwing in a few Jewish jokes in the comments here). Trolls are trolls.

I don't think RMS's "Saint IGNUcius" comedy routine is more rude than, as another poster pointed out, South Park for example.

RMS's act is world wide well known. Didn't they knew what they were going to get? It's the same act that RMS presented back in October 2008 here in my country (Paraguay, South America), complete with the "EMACS virgins" stuff, and received a stand-up applause.

Paraguay is a 98% catholic country (I was raised in a catholic home, went to a catholic school). There were around 600 people present, many women (my wife was present, a great feminist) and none of them have felt offended.

The cassock, the hard disk platter as halo, the laptop as a table of the Ten Commandments, aren't clues that this is a comedy act that seeks to ironize prejudices?

The cassock, the hard disk platter as halo, the laptop as a table of the Ten Commandments, aren't clues that this is a comedy act that seeks to ironize prejudices?

A comedy act which has no place at all at a technical conference. As people have said, it's this sort of (excuse for) humor which keeps the ratio of women to men in free software at 1 to 20.

If not not helping to make things better, Carlos, then you're helping to maintain that status quo, I'm afraid. As the comments here clearly show, there are plenty of people who find Stallman's comedy act offensive and divisive.

If he wants to be a comedian, there are plenty of bars in Boston with an "open mike night". Maybe getting hooted off the stage a few times would prove educational for him.

...you have no respect for the people behind the movement you so obviously support...

You're exactly right: I have no respect whatsoever for someone who thinks that his past contributions give him a free lifetime pass to treat women (and others) dismissively, derogatorily and with great insensitivity.

I have not read all of the comments here, but have read enough of them that I feel that I have to point this out.

People: email is not a means of private communication. It's no more private than sending a post card. I'll guarantee that, as a crackpot with more than a little paranoia, RMS knows this, so get off your high horses.

Defending the man is one thing. Getting huffy at the writer here because he finds a bit of tarnish on the brass god of foss and decides to talk about it is juvenile.

every discussion that is based on religion and gender is a waste of time. You are immensely wasting your as well as RMS' time.Please go back to do something productive for you, your family, your friends and for GNOME.

YOU DID THE RIGHT THING LEFTY. This 'private email concern' is just a joke...he DID use AWFUL comments for a public presentation, with WOMEN in the audience.It's not about 'not having humor/see the irony', it's about respect. If a good percentage of the people that cares about FSF/FOSS doesn't mind this kind of 'jokes', it doesn't make it fun anyway. I believe in FOSS, 4 liberties, etc. but RMS just couldn't accept he messed up. When you give a talk should not be to show how great/funny you are, but to communicate something and get people to think about it.

I don't take orders from people who have names, so why would I take directives from you? I'll do what I damned well please with my own time, and if I waste some of Stallman's, that his lookout, not yours.

As far as arguments about gender or religion being a waste of time goes, that's an opinion that could only be held by someone who's never suffered discrimination on account of their gender or religion. Must be nice to be so privileged. Too bad you're so unwilling to help others enjoy the same sort of advantages you clearly (and unthinkingly) do.

Hi, I'm a technically-proficient woman who was interested from a young age in building a career in the free software industry. My interest is still there, but I've since abandoned the idea of it as a career move and switched to network security (where I work with both free and non-free software). I grew up wanting to design and write operating systems that did cool stuff and that everyone could use and share.

Then I got involved in the local "scene" and was driven off by the rampant dismissal of female programmers and blatant, unapologetic sexism shown to me by BOTH the men and women in the industry and hobby. Being constantly objectified and treated as second-rate simply because I had breasts instead of a beard wore me down and I eventually abandoned all of the projects I was involved in to focus on security. Going to an RMS talk in the early 90s and meeting with him in person was among the worst of my experienced - I was fifteen, still obviously underage, and skipping gym class to hear him speak at a professional conference (that I'd snuck into). He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.) I was young and terrified of calling out someone that I'd previously idolized.

The sexism on display in his talks and in these comments are the precise reason as to why there aren't many women in free software to speak up, and the awkward gender ratio and propensity for male nerds to shout down any opposition makes it even more difficult to do so.

You folks telling Lefty that women can fend for themselves or whatever have clearly never heard the phrase "ally."

You folks telling Lefty that women can fend for themselves or whatever have clearly never heard the phrase "ally."

I appreciated your comment very much, thanks. That someone would feel so unwelcomed that they would make up their mind to avoid working as part of the community that I value so highly literally pains me.

It's hearing stories like this that make it clear to me, "O NOES U POSTED A EMAIL!!!1!!" ninnies notwithstanding, that I've done the correct thing here.

I am long past being surprised that Richard M "I wrote emacs, can I touch your boobies" Stallman is alienating women and anyone else who thinks that a technical forum should be a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds.

It's more depressing that it took 23 comments on this post for anyone to acknowledge that RMS, not Lefty, is the problem here. Presumably this post showed up as a link on linuxboysclub.net or something.

(And the excuse of "no, I wasn't being sexist in my keynote speech at a technical conference: I was just attacking people's religions" is the funniest thing I've heard all day.)

You're going to find some reason why you're right and everyone else is wrong and/or incompetent regardless of what's posted.

Anyway, probably better as a verbal conversation. I do get around a bit, maybe we'll meet one day at a conference or convention and you can tell me who you'd like to see replace RMS as your leader .. :)

publishing private emails - btw I don't get why you don't get that it's the same level of rudeness as to discriminiate women - is a no go.And every women supporting such behaviour has no credibility left for me.Hypocrites!

I have to thank the person that linked me to this post - the level of concentrated stupid in these comments is a wondrous and amazing thing to behold. I am both awed and horrified, and so very, very, very glad I only use open source tools and do not circulate in open source crowds.

Lefty - I am with you 100%, but shame on you. You should know better than to even try to begin to imagine RMS even acknowledging the faintest possibility that he might be even slightly less than 100% right about...well, anything. You'll have an easier time shouting at the tides to stop.

Side note - my verification word for this comment is "anger." Amusing.

a. Emails .. my amateur understanding of the Law (in this country) is that any publication (in this case, email) is by default the copyright of the author. Intentional re-production and publication of copyright material is an offense and I understand a mother of 4 just for fined a couple of million $'s for doing just that with 24 music tracks. I suspect RMS wouldn't stoop to engaging lawyers, but if he did my guess is that he'd nail you to the wall.

Your amateur understanding of the law is incorrect. While the copyright retains to the author, corespondence falls into a different aspect of the law. They are not commcercial, they are freely given to another, and become the recipient's property. The law which covers the publication of corespondence (be it e-mail, handwritten/typewritten letters, etc.) is not copyright, but libel/defamation. The only way RMS would be able to, "nail [him] to the wall" would be to show the e-mails were falsified, mis-represented, or in some other way showing him to infamy; which was in some way not a reasonable response to what was said.

The case law (notwithstanding all the moralising posturing being displayed here) is all on Lefty's side. There is no comparison to the judgement against someone for theft (which is what piracy is, not copyright infringement), and the publishing of e-mail.

Futher, Times v Sullivan holds that a public figure (even short lived figures, which I presume RMS is not), lose some of their claims to protection from libels. RMS would have to show he wasn't a public figure (hard to do, as he was paid to appear at the event in question), and that the publication was done with a knowledge of falsity, and intentional malice.

It's a slam dunk for dismissal.

The rest of this thread..."It's a joke, cantcha' take a joke" is a common defensive move by bigots, racists and sexists. It's a way to take the offended person, and make them seem to be petty and thin skinned. It doesn't fly. That RMS (to say nothing of the folks hiding behind their anonymity) chose to resort to that as his first, and only, line of defense for his behavior, tells me more about him than the jokes themselves.

This isn't an issue of "can he say that,", he most certainly can (and no one has said he can't), the question is whether people should pay to have him keep saying it.

The observation that, "women aren't in computing" might have more to do with the "hostile workplace environment" the attitudes expressed in the humor RMS seems to regularly use, and the active support the community seems to give him for it.

The idea that the offense ought to be let go in some way, not carried around, is foolish. This conference is over. I get the impression (I am not a software guy. I happened to see a link saying there was a lot of stereotypical sexist behavior going on... it seems to have been correct), that RMS is going to speak at other conferences. There are likely to be people present who aren't expecting to hear that women need to have their cherry popped. I'd be offended to hear that. I'm a Catholic. The religion aspects of it... no big deal.

It might even be educationally useful. Might be offensive. I'd have to hear it. I'd have to have context. But the virgin cracks (again, I've not heard them, but it was an open-source guy who was talking about this, and he has heard the jokes, more than once), offensive. No way to make them at all relevant. Because there is no need to make it seem a woman needs to have a man come and do something to//for her to make her a complete person. Which seems to be the consistent take on it.

So yeah, he can say it. No one, however, is obliged to like it, and you have no right to tell them that being offended somehow impinges your freedom.

Hey morons! There is no such thing as "private email" unless it's encrypted.

I'm one of two mail admins for a group of servers that handle hundreds of thousands of messages every day. Aside from the staggering amount of time it would take--I *could* read each and every message if I wanted to.

Nearly every single email passes from one mail system to another, which means at *least* two people (sending mail system admin, and receiving mail system admin) could be reading your mail.

I believe it would be bad form to post messages that had been encrypted without the consent of all parties...

Unlike the majority of this ill-informed, semi-literate peanut gallery, I actually have a vagina, uterus, and ovaries, so I am commenting from my perspective as a woman.

(Tangentially, I also have spiritual/metaphysical beliefs and a legal education with a specialty in Intellectual Property, but let's not get distracted again.)

Right on, Lefty! Thanks, soul brother! I do not feel denigrated or belittled by this exchange or publication in any way.

Reflexively, one of the first things I glanced for when I began reading this post was, "What gender is the author?" I was conditioned in patriarchal, sexist society to assume that "David" was not a woman, intersex, or transperson. The assumed masculinity made me suspicious, but upon reading the post in its entirety, I find nothing in David's writing that even suggests an implication of a connotation of sexism on his/her part.

On the contrary, the very point of this dialogue and its digital publication is the diametric opposite of what the majority of this thread's complaints claim. They just can't read and are in denial of the fact that their Holy Saint RMS (no offense to my canonized homies) could be such a dickhead.

Open source is kewl. Technical conferences are not comedy clubs. RMS should hire a speechwriter to contexualize his content since he seems to be suffering from Silicon Valley Ausberger's Syndrome. It's a fake medical condition I invented to describe a breed of geek that seems to have evolved somewhere in the San Jose area. Telltale symptoms are an acuity for mechanical and abstract technical concepts and a complete lack of mirror neurons to be able to empathize with others; thusly an inability to maintain social propriety.

Really, what I'm saying is RMS is mentally/emotionally disabled and shame on you, Lefty, for bringing attention to his shortcomings and publicly humiliating him.

I know that this discussion has really devolved at this point, but I want to thank you, Lefty, for bringing this issue up and for sticking to your guns so vehemently. It's important that somebody does.

About Me

I'm David Schlesinger (aka "Lefty"), an active and vocal member of the burgeoning mobile open source community.
I'm currently chair of the LiMo Foundation's Open Source Committee, and have previously been a member of the their Architecture Council (2006-2008), and Architectural Steering Committee (2008-2010), as well as a member of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board (2004-2010). I'm also a founding board member of the Open Media Now! Foundation. I've presented, on various occasions, at FOSTEL, GUADEC, Open Source in Mobile, and the Linux Symposium, among a variety of other venues.
Nothwithstanding any of that, this blog represents my own opinions, not those of my employer, our customers, or anyone else. As if you couldn't tell.